Coach Price
If “it takes a village to raise a child” we, as a community, should be ever so thankful that one of the men living among us is Gabby Price. Coach Price has impacted hundreds by his example of discipline, hard work, striving for excellence and accomplishing big goals. As a mom, I am thrilled that my son and his band of Golden Eagle brothers earned the right to compete in the NCAA Football Championship under the direction of someone who clearly loves his players, the game, his community and Husson University. Thanks to Price and his coaching staff for inspiring us all to know great enthusiasm and devotion.
Emily Ellis
Bangor
Carbon rules!
For the sake of Maine, we need to encourage our senators, Angus King and Susan Collins, and representatives, Chellie Pingree and Mike Michaud, and incoming Bruce Poliquin, to support the so-called Carbon Rule that enables the Environmental Protection Agency to crack down on the most polluting, carbon-emitting power plants in the U.S.
Maine is the recipient of high quantities of CO2 pollution drifting from power plants in the Midwest, which harms our fresh water and forest resources. This carbon pollution gradually, but surely, elevates average global temperatures, which threaten our recreational and tourism-based economy. It has already made the Gulf of Maine tops among warming bodies of water worldwide, creating upheaval in our already-wobbly fisheries industry.
Wild fluctuations in weather, more frequent flooding and inexorable sea level rise will drive up infrastructure costs and wash out our beaches and marshes, the nurseries of our crucial fishery. While we seek to reduce climate-changing carbon pollution, we need to stay vigilant about energy conservation and efficiency measures and increase our investment nationally, regionally and locally in renewable energy sources — a forward-thinking policy that guarantees more jobs for Maine people and aggressively takes a stand to mitigate the effects of the causes of our warming planet.
Sandy Buck
Cumberland Foreside
Shooting victim
Michael Brown was unarmed when killed by Darren Wilson, a Ferguson, Missouri, police officer. And Wilson is not going to be prosecuted — not for murder, not even for involuntary manslaughter. That’s because in Missouri, at least, and maybe in Maine, a police officer is not held responsible for killing another person if the officer “reasonably believed” that he or others were in serious danger. That’s according to a report from the grand jury that declined to even prosecute Wilson.
So, if you gave a police officer a menacing look, you might get shot. If I got into a verbal exchange with an officer, that person might believe they were “in serious danger” and be able to shoot or kill me with no punishment.
It’s no wonder African-Americans, in Missouri and around the country, are so angry with a decision not to prosecute the officer. They, especially, will continue to be victims of police shootings and killings because of the racism that has poisoned our country for 400 years.
It’s time to protest the special treatment that gives police officers the legal right to kill and the racism that causes so many African-Americans to be victims of police shootings.
Larry Dansinger
Monroe